Kochi, July 11 -- A survey projecting Shashi Tharoor as the most popular nominee for the chief minister's post among United Democratic Front (UDF) candidates, which the Thiruvananthapuram MP himself shared on his 'X' account, in the forthcoming Kerala Assembly polls has spread disquiet within the state Congress camp. The opinion survey, prepared by an agency named AT Vote Vibe and with a sample size of over 1,000 random individuals, claimed Tharoor was voted the most popular leader among UDF chief minister-hopefuls with 28.3% support. While 27% said they could not pinpoint a name, leader of the opposition VD Satheesan came second with 15.4% support followed by former LoP Ramesh Chennithala with 8.2% vote. Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal was the choice of just 4.2% of the respondents. The survey comes at a time when there's friction between Tharoor and the Congress leadership, both at the state and national levels. Last month, the CWC member publicly admitted that there were 'differences of opinion' with the current leadership and complained that he was not invited to campaign for the Nilambur Assembly bypoll. At the same time, he was called upon to lead a delegation of MPs to a bunch of countries including the United States and Brazil. After his return from the assignment, Tharoor wrote in a newspaper article that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'energy, dynamism and willingness to engage' was a prime asset for the country on the global stage. When asked about the survey, LoP Satheesan told reporters, "There are scores of such surveys coming out every day." UDF convenor Adoor Prakash was more direct. "Some people are deliberately creating such surveys to get some talking-points (before the media)," said Prakash. Meanwhile, what muddied the waters further in terms of the relationship between Tharoor and other state Congress leaders was his July 8 article for an international portal about the excesses during the Emergency in the mid-70s....